1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sport boot that can be converted to adapt to a variety of sports, especially gliding sports.
The above-mentioned type of boot is made from a conventional design, and has an external sole from which extends a shell base that is overlaid by an upper provided with an opening allowing the passage of a user's foot.
The boot is adapted to cooperate with a gliding element, on the one hand, via support surfaces formed at the bottom of the sole and cooperating with corresponding fixed surfaces of the gliding element, or of a binding device of the boot attached on the latter and, on the other hand, via zones for the vertical retention of the boot obtained at the front and rear of its sole or a part of its shell base, according to accepted standards, and adapted to cooperate with fastening members coming from the binding device.
The boot can be adapted, for example, to the alpine skiing, snowboarding, or mountain skiing.
2. Description of Background and Relevant Information
A boot of the aforementioned type is known from European Patent No. 0 167 765, which describes a boot that is capable of being adapted to mountain skiing or to alpine skiing due to the fact that a sole for mountain skiing is fully interchangeable with a sole for alpine skiing, and vice versa, under a rigid shell base provided with studs and in which the user's foot is housed.
According to such a boot design, it is necessary to have two integral soles, in addition to the rigid sole, which itself is provided with a studded sole, and very strong assembly means to guarantee the coherence between these various constituent elements of the boot.
On this last point, it is especially noted that it is on the edges of the removable soles that the retaining members of the ski bindings take support when the boot is used for alpine skiing, and that these edges, particularly in the heel zone of the boot, are blocked with respect to the rigid shell only by a pivoting stirrup located on the dorsal portion of the heel. Since the forces are particularly substantial in this zone, it appears clearly that the shell must be substantially reinforced in the area where it fastens to the pivoting stirrup.
A boot of this type is also known from the French Patent Publication No. 2 743 700, which describes a boot whose front and rear ends have removable binding means, of at least two types of soles, the one being standardized for skiing, and the other having a profile adapted for walking, so as to make them interchangeable and allow skiing with a walking sole from the same shell base, if the ski is provided with a raising cradle, or by adapting a standardized sole, if the ski is not provided with a raising cradle and is, therefore, conventional.
According to a particularity of this boot, the interchangeable soles are made of two distinct, but complementary, parts constituting the heel and the tip, each part defining upper end planes constituting the vertical retention zones adapted to cooperate with the fastening members of the binding device.
This last point clearly shows that, as previously, it is on the edge of the removable sole portions forming the heel and the tip that the members for the axial retention of the ski bindings take support, and that reinforcements are therefore necessary to withstand the particularly substantial forces in this zone, as in the aforementioned boot.